According to the Solutions packet, current trends in academia are extremely outdated. This sentiment is captured in the following representative quote:
Think about it. Today’s high-tech world is changing rapidly. Just thirty years ago, there was no such thing as CNN or the laptop computer, let alone the iPhones today’s college students use. Has the academy adapted along with every other business? No. It is still doing things much the same way it always has. It is your fiduciary duty to expect better. Request and review all financial information, including a breakdown of how tuition is calculated, in order to identify and reduce unnecessary costs.97
The construction of academia as an outdated and out-of-touch institution promotes the sentiment that, even if the Solutions are not ideal, they are a necessary move toward contemporary modes of teaching, accountability, and business administration. As Perry states in his original invitation to the Higher Education Summit, major, possibly uncomfortable changes are necessary because, “The half measures of the past just won’t do anymore.”98
The Solutions packet presents academia as existing within a bubble, untouched by
modern social and technological innovations and gradually approaching an inevitable moment of systemic collapse. While the Solutions are most directly concerned with the Texas state system
97 Texas Public Policy Foundation, Higher Education Summit, 72-3.
98 Rick Perry, faxed message to Morris Edwin Foster (unpublished manuscript in the author's possession,
71
of higher education, the Solutions packet’s call for reform extends well beyond Texas. Most of the Solutions’ arguments on the inevitable collapse of higher education thematize academia, whitewashing fundamental differences between private, public, community, and vocational schools.99
The need for change across the state systems of higher education was indicated by
Sandefer whose position was explained by Burka, stating, “As Sandefer and I talked, it was clear that he takes a dim view of the future of higher education unless fundamental changes occur. ‘I just think the system is broken,’ he told me. ‘The big lie is that the student comes first.’”100 In the same interview, Sandefer predicted that “higher education is about to see dramatic change
brought on by technology, which will allow education to be delivered at a lower cost to more people, posing a serious financial threat to the current model of a research-based university, whose large faculty and staff could become a liability.”101 Based on the Solutions packet and later sentiments from Sandefer, it is clear that the topos of inevitable change is intended to facilitate reforms in higher education prior to the development of larger, more dramatic krises.
99 An example of this theme is the Solutions’ frequent citation of Derek Bok, former President of Harvard
University. Bok’s critique of higher education is primarily based on his experiences at Harvard. However, his observations from Harvard, a private institution, are presented as evidence of the need to reform state systems of higher education. Bok, Our Underachieving Colleges. The Solutions’ trend of pulling examples from diverse forms of higher education, regardless of their relation to the Texas system of higher education is future demonstrated through its frequent citation of Martin Anderson’s Imposters in the Temple, a critic of academia based on
Anderson’s experiences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), a private research institution. Martin Anderson, Imposters in the Temple: A Blueprint for Imporving Higher Education in America (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press).
100 Burka, “Storming the Ivory Tower.”
101 Sandefer’s sentiment, paraphrased here by interviewer Paul Burka, is based on his reading of The
Innovative University: Changing the DNA of Higher Education From the Inside Out that calls for systemic changes
in higher education. See Clayton M. Christensen and Henry J. Eyring, The Innovative University: Changing the
DNA of Higher Education from the inside Out (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2011). Burka, “Storming the Ivory
72
As the preceding topoi have indicated, the Solutions are oriented to resolve a wide spectrum of issues in academia, empowering constituents to weed out unnecessary costs and throwing open the doors of colleges and universities in the name of greater transparency. The Solutions and their proposals are cast as major changes, but also based in common sense and inherently benign for all but the most undesirable of educators. Belief in the benign nature of the proposed reforms is made evident in the justifications for pay bonuses based on student
feedback. Here, the packet states that there are no reasonable objections to the proposal because, “The rewards would be voluntary, so faculty who objected to incentive pay could refuse the bonus with no harm done to anyone.”102 The Solutions packet identifies an opt-out clause as a potential remedy to any potential disagreement regarding student-based assessment. This and other proposals are presented as reasonable compromises that facilitate much-needed oversight while maintaining academic autonomy for instructors who successfully educate their students. The Solutions packet communicates the unsustainable nature of current higher education policies which have resulted in reduced quality and increased cost. For example, as a justification for learning contracts, the Solutions packet states, “taxpayers and tuition payers (students and parents) as well as employers of college graduates are all demanding greater accountability and performance from colleges and universities.”103 The Solutions packet utilizes this claim to indicate that a feverish swell of public sentiment makes reform of higher education an
inevitability. This topos is strategically deployed in the Solutions packet to quell oppositional
102 Arguments that student-based assessment is a benign metric ignores extensive literature demonstrating
student biases. These issues are unlikely to be resolved under the Solutions which explicitly support the use of pre- existing metric models to determine faculty bonuses Texas Public Policy Foundation, Higher Education Summit, 87, 88.
73
arguments on the need to consider alternatives to the Solutions or insistence that the status quo is both desirable and sustainable.
Defense of the Solutions is further couched in the context of Texas’ systems of higher education “falling behind” other states.104 This claim of Texas being outdated and needing reforms that are more substantial than those found in other states is rhetorically significant as it refutes claims that the Solutions go well beyond cost-cutting initiatives that have proven
sufficient elsewhere. By presenting Texas as a special case, the Solutions packet limits criticism to the boundaries of Texas, eschewing interstate comparison.
Finally, by arguing a need for change and situating the Solutions as alternatives that are uniquely necessary for Texas’ failing system, the Solutions packet promotes systemic changes in higher education while forestalling time delays, requests for extended consideration, or debate by insisting that any delay should be considered time wasted. As a capstone, the topos of imminent change expedites reforms justified through other topoi. This combination of urgency and implied level of crisis severity makes the Solutions and Perry’s subsequent support difficult to ignore and, as later chapters will show, equally difficult to refute.